


The Endless Distance of Desire

by clockworkrobots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mark of Cain, Pining, Post-Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 08:25:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1681499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots/pseuds/clockworkrobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been exactly six months since Dean has touched him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Endless Distance of Desire

_"Longing, we say, because desire is full  
of endless distances."_

\- Meditation at Lagunitas, Robert Haas

  
***

  
  
It's been exactly six months since Dean has touched him.

Castiel knows this because it has been six months since Dean accepted Cain's cursed Mark, since the power of it overtook him. They may have only had their small dalliances before then, stolen moments behind half-closed doors in the bunker, or under seedy motel lights scattered along lonely highways, but they were precious ones to the both of them. Castiel still remembers the night Dean drove him back to his motel room from Nora's after Ephraim, how they folded themselves into each other, too tired to hold their barriers up any longer. It was a collapse a long time coming, and for a brief moment, Castiel thought he would never see them put up again.

How blind he was, how selfish, how foolish. Dean was dying and he was so occupied again with his wars of angels to see.

He's grateful Dean's alive, of course. He could never _not_ be. Even with his... _affliction_ as it is, Castiel doesn't have it in him to deny his best and dearest friend. He cannot say he regrets it either, he thinks selfishly, in the end. If Castiel could not be there to save Dean from death, he is perhaps glad the Mark did. With Dean _alive_ , after all, a solution can still be found.

But ever since, Dean has not touched him, and for the longest time, Castiel could not fathom _why_. But then he started dying, too. Or, rather, started showing the outward signs of it, perhaps. His grace started withering away at a faster rate, and it was not long before he was earthbound, wings clipped again, and tired, always tired.

Graciously, Dean gave him his own bed, stating tersely that he doesn't use it anymore. Castiel would have denied him, begged off to find his own room among the bunker's many, but he knows these sheets to smell of Dean, still, despite missing his warmth. Among Dean's things, Castiel can pretend for a moment, that nothing has changed except that he has finally come home. It is not so of course, because though Dean's if often within arm's reach now, he keeps tight to himself, closed off. Castiel sometimes cannot distinguish if the aching sensation in his heart is the grace fracturing away or his forlornness for Dean's touch.

Sometimes he thinks he catches Dean looking at him with the same longing, with a sad, yearning look that Castiel is endlessly familiar with because he feels it, too. But then it is gone as quick as it came, hidden again behind a black veil of carefully constructed distances, and Castiel starts to wonder if, with his new power, Dean is seeing the way Castiel has been corrupted by his choices. He wonders if this demon is seeing the naked truth of the angel of him, that terrifying sight made all the worse by the poisoned power writhing in him to escape, and is disgusted by the sight. The thought makes Castiel ache even more, but in an inward way, a way that has him looking at Dean, and reaching regretfully back.

One night, however Castiel awakes to a rustling sound, and finds that it is Dean, seated at his former bedside. The desk lamp isn't on, but the hallway one is, and through the open door a little light spills in from it, illuminating Dean's tired, weary face. Castiel wonders if this is a familiar position for Dean to find himself in, their positions reversed. His skin tingles in the idea that Dean might often come and watch him, unable to keep his gaze away even is he keeps his arms locked in tight.

“Sorry,” he says, when he spots Castiel own gaze open him, “didn't mean to wake you up.” He moves to get up and leave but Castiel shuffles on the bed to sit up against the headboard, and motions for him to stay.

“No, no,” he says, voice cracking with exhaustion. “You didn't. It's okay.” He hopes it is, at least. Indeed, he might sleep _better_ in the promise that Dean does not go. But Dean remains hesitant, poised to run away. His eyes flicker to the doorway, and Castiel feels a cool blanket sweep over him of resignation.

He swallows thickly. “I know I repulse you,” he says all of a sudden, “now you can see the truth of what I am, the way my stolen grace rots inside. I know you can see the chasm at the core of me.”

“What?” Dean reels in shock and surprise, falling back into his chair, eyes wide in the horror that Cas should think such a thing. “No, Cas, man, I—” he begins, voice strained and a little desperate. “You don't _repulse_ me,” he whispers, as if it a sin to even say the word aloud, “It's _me_ who should repulse _you_.”

Castiel frowns. He does not understand. How could that ever be? The firast time he saw Dean his soul was twisted and marred by the shards of hate and hell, but still, he was the most beautiful thing that in all his thousands of years Castiel had ever seen.

“That could never happen,” Castiel asserts with every ounce of fierceness he has left in his tired body. “I've seen you in darker places, and still, you were the _brightest_.”

“I think your eyesight must be going,” Dean jokes self-deprecatingly, but his tone is devoid of any kind of amusement. He just sounds _sad_. Castiel's gaze traces the slump of his shoulders, curling his body in tight against himself to make him seem smaller, weighed down by the world and all that it means to be alive. Castiel yearns to reach out to him, but he doesn't, not yet. He still doesn't quite understand. Does Dean not touch him or come near because he thinks Castiel would reject _him?_ The idea sounds preposterous, not something Castiel had ever considered, but by the way Dean is looking at him now, the want pouring off him in waves, he wonders if he has not been the world's biggest fool yet again.

“You don't—” he starts to ask, haltingly at first. “You're not avoiding me because I disgust you now?”

“No!” Dean says, stricken. “No, no, no, never.” He looks like he wants to cry, but can't because to do so would be too dangerous, too ugly of a flood to bear. Castiel knows the feeling. “Cas, man,” his voice breaks, and then, miraculously, he reaches over tentatively to touch Castiel hands where it rests on the sheets. His touch is light, hesitant, but _warm_ in the most relieving of ways. “You have to believe me.”

Castiel pauses for a moment to search his friend's face. He watches the coils of black swirl behind his eyes, but he does not have separate faces as demons often do—this is not a possession, after all: it is simply _Dean_. That is what settles it. “I do,” Cas says, and watches Dean's face clear with relief.

He removes his hand and lets it fall back into his own lap, and Castiel mourns the loss, but at least now the drought has been broken.

They sit in silence for a moment, considering this new understanding of each other, apparently never having guessed the other was thinking the exact same self-denying thoughts. In hindsight, Castiel thinks he should have known, they have been here so many times before. For all they they are different, for all that they are similar, their biggest hurdle has always been _this_ , this disconnect in communication, in assumption. Castiel wonders if they will ever get better at it, but muses ruefully that at least that this time it hasn't resulted in him unleashing purgatory's worst monsters unto the world. Perhaps that's progress.

Dean is the one to break the silence. “How long do you have?” his gaze is both curious but afraid of the answer he knows Castiel will have to give.

“I don't know,” he says honestly, because he doesn't. He just knows that every day he feels a few more cracks, a few more fissures running through him. He looks down at his hands, ling limply on the bedspread. He clenches them. “Not long.”

“Can you, uh, let it go? Fall again?” Dean asks tentatively. When Castiel looks at him, he amends, “I know being human sucked, but it's better than dying, Cas,” he says, and the looks down, face twisting with bitterness. “It's better than a lot of things.”

“I could,” Castiel admits, but it's not as simple as that. “But Dean, I—”

Dean's head shoots up again. “What?”

“I _would_ fall again. It's not the limits of humanity that's stopping me,” he says. As much as he would maybe have denied it before, he does miss it, being human. He misses the taste of it, the smell of it, the _fullness_ of it, even when it was often overwhelming. In his rare moments where he's honest with himself, Castiel will admit that being an angel has felt empty for a long time.

“Then what is?”

Castiel holds his gaze, eyes open and honest. He sees Dean there, all black and green and brown and thinks, _Ah yes, the colours of earth_. Dean's eyes flicker between emerald and obsidian, but Castiel knows _both_ are precious stones. Both shine in the sun. Maybe gravity doesn't weigh so heavy on him now.

So he looks at him, voice steady and sincere, and says, “It's _you_.”

“Me?” Dean sits back in his chair and blinks in renewed surprise.

“I need to hold on to what grace I can if there's any chance I can help you with it,” he explains, chest feeling tight the knowledge that this is a dangerous gamble.

“Fuck, Cas, _no_.,” Dean implores, horrified that Castiel would stake so much on his salvation. But Castiel will not take it back. He _could_ , but he _won't_. It's a matter of free will, and Castiel, when it is within his power, will always choose Dean. But Dean's face breaks into a mournful look, and Castiel is surprised to find that is is sad for _him_. “You can't save everyone,” he says, echoing Castiel's own words from what seems like so long ago.

Castiel smiles then, full of his own sort of sad affection. “But you're not just anyone, Dean,” he tells him, voice soft and low as he admits his greatest weakness. “The sad truth of it is that I'd watch so many people die for the sake of you.”

Dean's knuckles whiten where they grip his knee. “I'm not worth that, Cas,” he bites out after a shuddered breath. His face is pinched with regret. Castiel _hates_ to see it there, and his fingers twitch to wipe the deep lines at the sides of Dean's eyes away. Dean shakes his head. “Not before, but 'specially not now.”

This time, it's Castiel who reaches out. He folds a hand over the one closest to him, on Dean's left knee. He grips it tight. “You're _always_ worth it,” he asserts with the utmost conviction. The corners of his mouth quirk up in a wry sort of smile. “As you once said, I think... I'd rather have you, Dean Winchester, cursed or not.”

Dean huffs, half with exasperation, and half with gratitude. He turns his own hand over, and latches them palm to palm, lacing his fingers through Cas' own. The divots of Castiel fingers were not designed to hold these hands—indeed, they lived another lifetime holding another—but Castiel settles into a deep contentedness and pride at how, while they may not have been meant for each other in the normal sense of the phrase, they have stubbornly carved out matching puzzle pieces _themselves_. They only fit because they _willed_ themselves to, and that, Castiel thinks, is a grand accomplishment indeed.

Dean looks ruefully down at their conjoined hands. “God, we're a couple of sorry bastards, aren't we?” he says after a beat.

“Yes,” Castiel agrees. “But perhaps less sorry when together.”

At that, Dean cracks a small smile. Castiel counts it as a huge victory, and something soars out of the cage of his chest. “I guess that's something, right?”

Castiel nods, and squeezes his hand still nestled inside of Dean's.

“It's everything.”


End file.
